Editors Guidelines
Section 1: Readability (From Oxford’s Editing Guide) ' '''Section 1, Part 1: Checking the text ' ' The key goals are to check that the text: * Flows logically * Is coherent and consistent (The tenses are consistent) * Forms a meaningful whole * Is clearly expressed * Is accurate in the information it provides * Has an appropriate tone ' ' '''Section 1, Part 2: Questions to ask yourself while editing' Some key questions to ask yourself when editing a piece of text are: * Does the opening paragraph provide a clear indication of the purpose of the text and a broad outline of the content? * Does every part of the text contribute to the key idea in order to form a meaningful whole? * Is there a sentence (preferably the first) in each paragraph that summarises the key point of that paragraph? * Are the paragraphs unified, i.e. do they contain only one single idea each? * Does the text flow logically from one paragraph to the next? * Have transitional words or phrases (such as, for example, ‘however’, ‘thus’, ‘therefore’, ‘as a result’, ‘in this way’, ‘furthermore’, ‘above all’ and ‘moreover’) been used, but not overused, to help the reader to make connections between the ideas? * Are the sentence structure and vocabulary varied, without too much repetition? * Have irrelevant and unnecessary ‘filler’ words such as ‘actually’ or ‘basically’ been avoided? * Has evidence been given to back up statements? * Has consistent terminology been used throughout, or if more than one term has been used to refer to something, is it clear that they are one and the same thing? Is a positive and professional tone maintained throughout? * Is the tone appropriate for the reader? * Does the last paragraph neatly and concisely summarise and conclude? Section 1, Part 3: Proofreading Proofreading involves correcting small errors (some of which can, nevertheless, have a major impact), it does not require major rewriting.' ' The aim of proofreading is to spot and correct errors in: * Spelling * Typography * Grammar, punctuation and use of language * Style and format * Anything missed at the editing stage ' ' Section 1, Part 4: Common grammatical errors ' ' * Tense agreement: mixing past and present tenses throughout a piece of text * Subject/verb agreement: using plural verb conjugations with single subjects (e.g. ‘one in ten people are …’ instead of ‘one in ten people is …’) * Pronoun/case agreement: confusing the subject and object of the sentence (e.g. ‘He sat between Bob and I’ instead of ‘He sat between Bob and me’, or ‘Me and John are working on that project’ instead of ‘John and I are working on that project’) * Confusing similar words, such as ‘effect’ and ‘affect’ * Misuse of apostrophe before ‘s’ at the end of a word, which is often incorrectly added before the ‘s’ in plural words, e.g. ‘The report’s are finished’ instead of ‘The reports are finished’ – an apostrophe should only be used before ‘s’ to indicate possession (genitive case), e.g. ‘The minister’s cat is black’ or ‘My friend’s desk is tidy’. However, in the case of the pronoun ‘it’, the possessive form is ‘its’ without an apostrophe. Adding an apostrophe and ‘s’ to ‘it’ indicates the abbreviated form of ‘it is’ or ‘it has’. * Incorrect conjugation of modal verbs, such as ‘should of’ or ‘would of’ instead of ‘should have’ or ‘would have’ * Words with similar spelling or pronunciation but different meanings, which cannot always be detected by automatic spelling and grammar checks, such as ‘they’re/‘their’/‘there’ Section 1, Part 5: Other common errors in regards to typography, style, etc.. * Double spaces between characters, especially after a full stop * Incorrect capitalisation * Interchanging small words such as: of/off/on, and/an/as, or it/is/if * Inconsistent use of abbreviations * spell out numbers below 10 (however, can spell out any numbers you deem necessary) ' ' Section 2: SEO: For instructions on SEO, please refer to this document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZGZexbwk7MeuAU1zbNi4jVlzxNJixX4aDo5WujIBD9s/edit ' ' Section 3: Plagiarism/Copyright: * Plagiarism: We will have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to plagiarizing other sources as this could manifest itself in legal problems for our organization and writers. For this reason, when using content from another website or avenue of information, please make sure to cite and give credit to that source when it is appropriate to do so. - Image Copyright: When using images for articles please only either use images that are of public domain or that we provide for our organization. Also please cite the image source in a caption when doing so. ' ' For more information on this, please refer to sections II-IV of our ‘Writing Guidelines’: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-8hwapGxlBL2Lpb4LmmyIfZwldakHthbuMqlX_puURk/edit or https://app.luminpdf.com/viewer/H3hLaHCzDFuEhmHeL (If the first link doesn’t work) ' ' Part 4: Article Styling ' ' For all articles, we will be using the New York Times styling guidelines when producing content. This style guide is for the most part intuitive, but may contain a few rules regarding capitalizing, apostrophes that you might not be used to. If you are not sure how to format content inside your article please see this FAQ regarding the New York Times Styling guidelines here: https:// afterdeadline.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/faqs-on-style-2/. ' ' General Info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ The_New_York_Times_Manual_of_Style_and_Usage General info on styling in general here: http://stylemanual.org/ Note: News articles may be subject to additional guidelines that will be posted separately.